Good ol’ Mucko!
I think of him often.
Is there a D&D Ping List?
What’s this, two D&D “related” crimes in how many years?
You know I have heard of any number of murderers over the years who followed football.
And then there are all those killings at soccer games.
TV watchers kill people too.
Oh and how many killers also run around shooting people on a playstation.
And those vile comic books.
Clearly, leisure time is the problem,
That or it is fun to denigrate pass times one doesn't participate in.
She’s in the dungeon for a long time now and plenty of time to commune with the dragon. She is evil to the bone!
I thought blaming D&D stopped in the 90’s when video games started coming out so those could be blamed instead.
LOL wow article doesn’t even mention currently. Just talks about her playing and meeting her husband in the 80’s.
uh huh. ;)
Met at Northeastern University and has a Harvard graduate degree. Wow. From the most blue collar to the most Brahmin school. It’s going to be hard to stick this on social class.
Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t kill people, people kill people. /mandatory
Interesting trivia, a-propos of nothing —In the IDF if a trooper lists D&D as a hobby, he is automatically assigned a non-sensitive job.
The IDF thinks D&D is a sign of a loose connection on reality.
I don’t know if this is any longer the case.
I thought that she was an acolyte of Obama.
Don't tell me that David and Barbara Mikkelson (Snopes) have rushed out a denial of the ultra-left connection.
The media,of course, is sloughing off and barely mentioning the fact that she was a lefty loon and obsessive admirer of 0bama.
If she was a rightward admirer of George Bush or Sarah Palin, it would be second coming headlines with 3 hour TV specials about it.
No way! Who would have ever thought that?
Bet she listened to Ozzy Osbourne too. Did she play Halo?
My brother (tenured university professor, soon to be chair) and myself (fourteen published novels) both played AD&D almost every weekend. We probably still would if we had the time. Nowadays maybe we can find a couple hours to play a video game.
I’m good friends with an editor, his wife (MD, child psychiatrist) and another guy (engineer) who still find the time. Another gentleman I know, a publisher who also owns a software company, plays with his three kids.
There’s no way to be sure, but certainly the total number of players is in the millions. Some are bound to commit crimes, even murder. I go to conventions and see players of all ages gathered round the tables, laughing, rolling dice and eating Doritos. Some things never change, including journalists trying to link it to crime.
I knew quite a few people who were into this in college, and they seemed to represent the full range from perfectly normal sensible people to those who clearly had trouble dealing with reality and distinguishing reality from fantasy. But as far as I can tell, anyone who’s still involved in it more than a couple years after finishing college (or grad school if they go on to grad school) has some serious head problems. However, nothing in this article indicates that either Bishop or her husband had continued with D&D beyond their undergraduate days.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly sinister about D&D, and it’s perfectly normal for college kids to get heavily into some weird or goofy activities. It’s sort of like Star Trek and Sci-Fi conventions. Nothing worrisome about college kids dressing up as characters from Star Trek or or other Sci-Fi flicks, and excitedly heading off to these conventions for a weekend. But when you see somebody in their late 20s, 30s, 40s, still heavily into this, planning their costumes months in advance, etc, it’s a clear sign that they haven’t developed a sense of belonging in the real world. And it’s almost always correlated with a lack of a well-paying, steady job and accompanying financial security.
But Bishop and her husband seemed to be functioning quite well in the real world. There was the tenure issue, but they still had their biotech invention going for them, and Bishop certainly wouldn’t have had any trouble landing another teaching job at a similar salary. The student comments on RateMyProfessors were perfectly normal, and indicated that she was more popular with students than the average science professor. Nobody mentioned anything about her seeming strange or being difficult to get along with. My guess is that her husband was as shocked by this as anyone, and that he may not have known much
(if anything) about her fatal shooting of her brother. I’d be very surprised if he knew about her attempt immediately afterwards to get a car from a dealership by holding two employees at gunpoint. How they heck she ever got away with all that is beyond me.
Hmmmm...never heard of using pistols in a D&D adventure.
So, is Laurel J. Sweet a pen name for Jack Chick, or Tipper Gore?
/only somewhat sarcastic.
What happened in this case is not the fault of a game, or rock music, or high fructose corn syrup. It happened because the perp is a friggin’ sociopath who should have been locked up long ago.
Um....Bishop’s entertainment preferences get a headline, but not her politics?